Rico couldn't go to sleep. He had insomnia. No matter how comfortable he got, slumber wouldn't take over. This troubled him because he knew Skipper would wake him at 0600 hours for their morning routine and if he didn't get up, he'd have to do laps around the pool until high noon or something. Rico promptly got out of bed and looked for something to quickly bore him, so he started to rummage through Kowalski's things; maybe he'd have some lengthy over-analysis on something that would bore him to sleep.

Eventually, Rico found Kowalski's notebook. Apparently, it was a sketchbook. Nothing but pictures. Then Rico found a flaw in his plan: if it had been a notebook he wouldn't have been able to read it, but he discarded that thought and flipped through the pages of Kowalski's drawings. They were really immaculate, for someone with a flipper drawing with an over-sized pencil, like he was a professional. There was no real theme to the sketchbook, he was just drawing things that he'd seen before with a few diagrams here or there. Rico kept flipping through the sketchbook until he saw a picture of 'Slippy' the penguin. Rico started to guffaw but quickly quieted down to chuckling. He'd almost forgotten Private 'rise to stardom', he seems so at place with that though...Oh, well. His place was with the other penguins, getting sucked completely into the zoo life would compromise the mission. Though after that picture, there was nothing else left until he noticed something at the back of the sketchbook. It was a picture of Rico, smiling with that slightly crazy smile, drawn with the utmost care. Rico blushed; not even when he looked in the mirror that he thought his scar looked good to himself. Regaining composure, Rico quickly turned the page and found another portrait for himself, and another, and another. Promptly, the scarred penguin closed the book of Kowalski's drawings and put it back in it's place, waddling back to bed.

Rico hid his face to try to hide the fact that he was blushing; if anything it was making it worse. He didn't even know why Kowalski chose him to be his model. Private is much more cute than he was, Skipper had this professionalism to him and surely Kowalski could have drawn himself. Why Rico? He had the scar. The scar had been there for as long as he could remember. He had always been made fun of for it in the past being so big, obvious and ugly. Rico was shut out from most penguins and just stopped trying to talk to people. It was too much of a pain to get yelled at for trying to fit in, and eventually he became mute. Rico was shocked when he realized he couldn't chirp, but slowly and surely he found a way to talk from his gut to speak. It was painful but at least he had a voice again.

Back to reality, Rico still didn't 100% believe what he saw. Multiple portraits of himself by Kowalski. For his personal sanity, Rico thought of himself as 'above average' at best, but someone clearly saw him as much more. Not to mention he didn't remember posing for Kowalski to draw him...but the tall genius was always 'taking notes' and 'making calculations' all the time.

Rico decided to not dwell on it or else he wouldn't get any sleep. Though, Rico did think it might be some test of sorts.

Or it wasn't.